The first weekend

I realized this week, sometime in the middle of the night, that as hard as it has been to get to work on time for the past four and a half years that I've made the daycare-work run, that suddenly THIS year, I need to get the KID to school on time. My workplace, bless them, turned a blind eye to my coming in an hour late or even an hour and a half as long as my work got done. I was only inconveniencing myself, for the most part, by ensuring that I had to pull stuff together at nap time over the weekend. (Or more often, work like a mo-fo when I WAS there.)

But now I need to get the kid to school on time, which has effectively solved my getting to work late problem. But instead of just inconveniencing only me when I'm late, I'm now affecting my kid AND his class if he's late.

So my new morning routine is not to sleep in one tiny minute, and to just not sit down for a single second for the hour I'm home in the morning. It goes like this:

getupgotothebathroommakecoffeemakebreakfastforthreekidseatbreakfastandoverseetwokidseatingbreakfastshowerwashhairandbodydryoffpickoutfitgetdressedfixhairandmakeupifIhavetimemakethreelunchesfindcoatsandshoesanddaycareorschoolsuppliesherdtwochildrenintothecaranddrive.

And the best news? I get to do this every school morning for the next, oh, ELEVEN YEARS.

Oh. Weekends. Oh my how nice you are when I get to sit down.

Oh my Milestones!

We went to my parents' early this week. Or late last. One morning my mother drove us out to a nearby farm for produce -- mostly corn, this time of year -- and on the way back, a 20 minute drive, my son got bored and started playing with his loose tooth. Just as we were pulling on the off-ramp of the highway, he said, all casual-like, "Hey, I just pulled out my tooth!"

And just like that, my baby was gone.

He started kindergarten this morning. He's ready. He's SO ready. He's been waiting for this for a month, he's excited and psyched and so, so pleased to be there. It was just a couple hours, time for a story in story time and some outside play and a snack -- nothing he hadn't done before -- but it was different.

There's just something else that has changed, you know? He wears jeans and huge sneakers and has a new haircut and there's a hole in his mouth. He has homework! (Guess how old the teacher is!) He has a backpack in his cubby for his things.

My baby.

Hard to believe.

Even harder to believe is that I managed not to cry when I left him there for the first time. Really.